Just kidding. Anyway, let me paste the response I’ve been posting elsewhere for this:
If I never see that stupid War is Boring article on the F-35 again, it will be too soon. It’s a disingenuous, “not even wrong” piece of idiocy, like pretty much everything else on that site. It especially hurts to find myself having to defend the F-35, an aircraft I share many of your reservations about.
What even they don’t mention is the fact that the F-35 is not supposed to be an air superiority fighter. It’s a strike aircraft, first and foremost, designed with enough air-to-air capability to get out safely when everything goes to hell in a hurry. As I’ve seen it put elsewhere, it’s designed to do the job that the F-16 and F-18 actually ended up doing, as opposed to what they were designed to do. What air-to-air capability it does have is focused on the ability to bag enemy aircraft before they get into knife-fighting range. It plays to our technological strengths vs. those of out potential opponents.
There are a thousand and one problems with the JSF and how it’s been acquired, but that doesn’t mean that every bit of click-bait half-arsed “journalism” that criticizes it is justified.
I’d add that we were sold the idea that the F-22 would handle air-superiority, while the F-35 would handle strike missions and play backup support for the F-22 against second- and third- tier opponents. Now that we’ve cancelled F-22 production, we’re stuck with the F-35 for pretty much everything, at least once the legacy aircraft wear out. Restarting F-22 production at this point would likely be as expensive as just starting from a blank sheet of paper, too.
The whole boondoggle is perfectly representative of the extreme dysfunction of the post-Cold War defense establishment.
Thinking that fifth generation combat aircraft will dog fight is as silly as spacecraft having manned ball turrets (yes I’m looking at you, Millennium Falcon). People should be lucky the F-35 still has at least pilots!
On a related note, did you know that the last battleships (USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin) were stricken from the Naval Registry back in 2006?
Hey, at least they were really good for shore bombardment. The Marines really miss the BBs, even if that capability wasn’t worth the cost of maintaining them anymore.
The F-35 will not be stealthy going into a target area, because it will have all sorts of ordnance slung under its wings. It will have a radar cross section similar to an F-16 and will be findable and targetable by the usual radars.
If it is going to attack a target that is heavily defended with modern radars and missiles, it will have to go in clean, which means it will be carrying much less ordnance internally. The number of aircraft required would be substantially larger.
It will be stealthy on the way out when its wings are clean. The missions will be successful if the F-35 can get away before the bad guys show up.
As to using long range AA missiles, the USAF ,abbr title=”Rules Of Engagement”>ROE almost always forbid that and require visual identification. The Army did shoot down at least one British aircraft in the second Gulf war using BVR Patriot missiles, and the Vincennes did shoot done a civilian air liner in the first Gulf war. Who knows what happened in Ukraine? So unless the USAF is absolutely certain no innocent aircraft are in range and all radar targets are bad guys, you won’t see any over the horizon shots.
The USAF usually emphasizes the F-35′s other attributes, like networking, which allows it to swap off targets to other members of the strike force and to share targeting information. Then there is an enhanced sensor suite and improved cockpit displays.
We will have to wait and if the designers have made the right tradeoffs.
I agree with pretty much all of the points you make, Bob. We honestly have no idea what sort of situation we’ll face going into another major conventional war, especially with regard to ROE and other issues that reside in the political penumbra of a conflict. Traditional US policy has been to lose the first few battles of most major wars we get into while learning (more usually, relearning) what works and what doesn’t. With everything so front-loaded these days, I’m not sure we can afford that kind of learning process anymore. We’ll just have to hope any potential opponents can afford it less.
Scipio and Slovenian have it absolutely right. Dogfighting is as obsolete as sword-fighting. Imagine someone trying to criticize some new military rifle by saying, “Ha, that bayonet would be useless in a sword-fight, and most of the time they won’t even be attaching it! What a corrupt fiasco is this whole so-called ‘M-16′ project!”
There is so much completely irrational F-35 hate and A-10 love out there, especially online. That’s worth reflecting upon. It’s fascinating as a social phenomena, but, again, goes to show the absurdity of anything that relies on the assumption of the accuracy and reasonableness of public opinion.
The A-10 stuff is possibly even worse, in my opinion. We let it work like it was designed at the beginning of the first Gulf War, low-level strafing runs against enemy armor and battlefield interdiction strikes deep behind enemy lines. Result: in the first few weeks a bunch of them got shot down. After that they were pulled back to mid-level and fired Mavericks at the armor. Just as effective (if not more so) but it meant that the gun was nothing but dead weight. So it has remained, with the exception of shooting guys in pickup trucks. The proliferation of MANPADs may make even that too hazardous soon enough.
It can be so hard to explain to people that the gun has effectively been dead weight for more than 20 years, and that modern CAS consists primarily of dropping a smart-bomb or launching an AGM from 20,000 ft. up. Indeed, that’s the vast majority of what the A-10′s have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are some other important CAS scenarios, but none of them can justify a 70-rps, 30-mm shell, anti-tank Gatling gun.
It’s already much better with regular rotary-wing aviation support, but that can be slow to get on station, and has a worse MANPAD risk.
I’d rather have an AC-130 gunship circling overhead, keeping the enemy port-side and landing area-clearing artillery on their position, to help me with that mission anyday.
The reason to keep the A-10 around is not the gun, as wonderful as the gun is, but because it’s dirt cheap to operate compared to every other aircraft in the fleet. There’s no point in sending a $30k/hour F-35 or $20k/hour F-15 if the $10k/hour hog will suffice.
The F-35 is about twice as expensive per flying hour as the A-10, though the A-10 is by all accounts a terrible hangar queen. No one knows how the F-35 will be on that account.
The real issues are:
1) The A-10 fleet is being maintained mostly through cannibalization of existing aircraft. There’s no further supply of spares.
2) For the particular role it’s good at, CAS in a permissive air environment, drones cost 2/3 less than the A-10 per flying hour and replicate most of the functionality.
3) The monetary, personnel, and time expense of maintaining the A-10 fleet as a whole very disproportionate to the unique capabilities it brings to the table.
Isegoria: This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History, by T. R. Fehrenbach, makes the short list.
Gaikokumaniakku: Marginally relevant, but likely to be of interest to readers who may actually have seen it already: The Marine Corps Commandant’s 2026 Reading List.
Isegoria: I think The Dracula Tape is moving up in the queue.
Bruce: “Medicine in the 19th century was in a Hell of a state.” — Dracula in Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape, where Dracula says Lucy was killed by van Helsing’s bungled blood transfusions.
Isegoria: I felt the same way about Dumas: Reading The Count of Monte Cristo in 11th grade clarified just how derivative most of the entertainment we consume really is — everything has been done better by Dumas, and he did it over a century ago — and it got me wondering why we don’t regularly enjoy the pop classics.
Isegoria: Apparently Saberhagen’s Dracula Series goes on for nine books!
Bruce: The Dracula Tape and The Holmes-Dracula File by Fred Saberhagen are extremely good, and Saberhagen knew the source material very well.
Benjamin I. Espen: Dracula is like the still center around which a whole constellation of pop culture orbits. You can see a lot of things that were clearly derived from it, yet returning to the original is a shocking and even a refreshing experience. None of the derivatives have its power and gravity.
Isegoria: When I read Frankenstein years ago, I immediately realized how little resemblance it bore to the version of the story I’d osmotically absorbed through the culture.
Phileas Frogg: I’ve returned to Dracula many times throughout the years, and I’m always amazed that each time I pick it up I become more and more aware of the genuine horror of the story. My most recent re-read a few months ago elicited the willies on several occasions, a phenomenon that I really only experienced a handful of times while reading. Excellent novel, and far superior to, Frankenstein, despite the fact that they are paired together so often, and the latter seems to be preferred...
Gaikokumaniakku: I got up this morning planning on having a productive and diligent day, but now that I have seen a single mention of skeleton, I suppose I will spend the next sixteen hours watching Alessia Crippa videos. Che ci vuoi fare? Così è la vita.
Gaikokumaniakku: 1961: The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. 1971: Federal funding becomes normal. 1981: Defense funding becomes foundational. 1991: Dependence survives the Cold War. 2001: No civil rights for “enemy combatants” or “terrorists.” ; 2011: Grant-seeking becomes institutionalized. 2021: Government influence over entire economy is semi-concealed...
Phileas Frogg: The cost of civilization is the vicious, perpetual, and unapologetic enforcement of civilization. The refusal to pay that cost by our leaders is their insistence that we must forego the laws of civilization and be subject to the laws of the jungle once again. While the American experience of this seems to still be at the stage where institutional efforts could, maybe, still reverse our descent, in Europe, and the UK in particular and in light of the Belfast situation, it appears that they...
Bob Sykes: So, this yet another benefit of open borders and free migration. Evidently, this is an unintended (?) consequence of the wholesale, heavily subsidized transport of illegal aliens into the US by the Biden administration. Or did the anti-red meat crowd piggy-back a pet project on the Biden scheme?
Isegoria: Apparently “Descendant“ appears in his The State of the Art collection.
Bill: Eventually, the US Army will get to the logical conclusion of this line of development, namely, the smart suit from “Descendant” , a 1987 short story by Iain Banks. After a bad crash, the protagonist is badly injured; can he walk back to base? The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet. The suit walks faster than I do. It reckons it is only twenty percent stronger than the average human. Something of...
Isegoria: I’m reminded of Feynman’s anecdote, in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, about struggling to speak Portuguese: Now I wanted to say, “So, I learned Portuguese,” but I couldn’t think of the word for “so.” I knew how to make BIG words, though, so I finished the sentence like this: “CONSEQUENTEMENTE, aprendi Portugues!” When the two men came back with the baggage, she said, “Oh, he speaks Portuguese! And with such wonderful words: CONSEQUENTEMENTE!”
Phileas Frogg: I had no clue Murakami used this method. Honestly my prose can get a bit purple at times, I should try it out. Now I just have to learn enough to write in another language.
Gaikokumaniakku: It is very hard to give honest and constructive feedback on complicated student projects that might prove a student has skill. If it were easier to give feedback, training desired skills would be much easier. Whether any form of training can really imbue a student with skill is questionable. Skill is like a delicate seedling: the teacher can try to provide the right conditions and after that everyone can HOPE that the student manifests skill by mysterious processes. Of course,...
Oh no, the brain slugs have gotten to you too!
Just kidding. Anyway, let me paste the response I’ve been posting elsewhere for this:
I’d add that we were sold the idea that the F-22 would handle air-superiority, while the F-35 would handle strike missions and play backup support for the F-22 against second- and third- tier opponents. Now that we’ve cancelled F-22 production, we’re stuck with the F-35 for pretty much everything, at least once the legacy aircraft wear out. Restarting F-22 production at this point would likely be as expensive as just starting from a blank sheet of paper, too.
The whole boondoggle is perfectly representative of the extreme dysfunction of the post-Cold War defense establishment.
It comes as no surprise that the F-35 can’t dogfight, because it wasn’t designed to be a dogfighter. Perhaps I should’ve spelled that out.
One should never have to apologize for the obliviousness of one’s guests.
Thinking that fifth generation combat aircraft will dog fight is as silly as spacecraft having manned ball turrets (yes I’m looking at you, Millennium Falcon). People should be lucky the F-35 still has at least pilots!
On a related note, did you know that the last battleships (USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin) were stricken from the Naval Registry back in 2006?
Hey, at least they were really good for shore bombardment. The Marines really miss the BBs, even if that capability wasn’t worth the cost of maintaining them anymore.
The F-35 will not be stealthy going into a target area, because it will have all sorts of ordnance slung under its wings. It will have a radar cross section similar to an F-16 and will be findable and targetable by the usual radars.
If it is going to attack a target that is heavily defended with modern radars and missiles, it will have to go in clean, which means it will be carrying much less ordnance internally. The number of aircraft required would be substantially larger.
It will be stealthy on the way out when its wings are clean. The missions will be successful if the F-35 can get away before the bad guys show up.
As to using long range AA missiles, the USAF ,abbr title=”Rules Of Engagement”>ROE almost always forbid that and require visual identification. The Army did shoot down at least one British aircraft in the second Gulf war using BVR Patriot missiles, and the Vincennes did shoot done a civilian air liner in the first Gulf war. Who knows what happened in Ukraine? So unless the USAF is absolutely certain no innocent aircraft are in range and all radar targets are bad guys, you won’t see any over the horizon shots.
The USAF usually emphasizes the F-35′s other attributes, like networking, which allows it to swap off targets to other members of the strike force and to share targeting information. Then there is an enhanced sensor suite and improved cockpit displays.
We will have to wait and if the designers have made the right tradeoffs.
I agree with pretty much all of the points you make, Bob. We honestly have no idea what sort of situation we’ll face going into another major conventional war, especially with regard to ROE and other issues that reside in the political penumbra of a conflict. Traditional US policy has been to lose the first few battles of most major wars we get into while learning (more usually, relearning) what works and what doesn’t. With everything so front-loaded these days, I’m not sure we can afford that kind of learning process anymore. We’ll just have to hope any potential opponents can afford it less.
As you say, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Scipio and Slovenian have it absolutely right. Dogfighting is as obsolete as sword-fighting. Imagine someone trying to criticize some new military rifle by saying, “Ha, that bayonet would be useless in a sword-fight, and most of the time they won’t even be attaching it! What a corrupt fiasco is this whole so-called ‘M-16′ project!”
There is so much completely irrational F-35 hate and A-10 love out there, especially online. That’s worth reflecting upon. It’s fascinating as a social phenomena, but, again, goes to show the absurdity of anything that relies on the assumption of the accuracy and reasonableness of public opinion.
The A-10 stuff is possibly even worse, in my opinion. We let it work like it was designed at the beginning of the first Gulf War, low-level strafing runs against enemy armor and battlefield interdiction strikes deep behind enemy lines. Result: in the first few weeks a bunch of them got shot down. After that they were pulled back to mid-level and fired Mavericks at the armor. Just as effective (if not more so) but it meant that the gun was nothing but dead weight. So it has remained, with the exception of shooting guys in pickup trucks. The proliferation of MANPADs may make even that too hazardous soon enough.
It can be so hard to explain to people that the gun has effectively been dead weight for more than 20 years, and that modern CAS consists primarily of dropping a smart-bomb or launching an AGM from 20,000 ft. up. Indeed, that’s the vast majority of what the A-10′s have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Scipio:
There are some other important CAS scenarios, but none of them can justify a 70-rps, 30-mm shell, anti-tank Gatling gun.
It’s already much better with regular rotary-wing aviation support, but that can be slow to get on station, and has a worse MANPAD risk.
I’d rather have an AC-130 gunship circling overhead, keeping the enemy port-side and landing area-clearing artillery on their position, to help me with that mission anyday.
The reason to keep the A-10 around is not the gun, as wonderful as the gun is, but because it’s dirt cheap to operate compared to every other aircraft in the fleet. There’s no point in sending a $30k/hour F-35 or $20k/hour F-15 if the $10k/hour hog will suffice.
The F-35 is about twice as expensive per flying hour as the A-10, though the A-10 is by all accounts a terrible hangar queen. No one knows how the F-35 will be on that account.
The real issues are:
1) The A-10 fleet is being maintained mostly through cannibalization of existing aircraft. There’s no further supply of spares.
2) For the particular role it’s good at, CAS in a permissive air environment, drones cost 2/3 less than the A-10 per flying hour and replicate most of the functionality.
3) The monetary, personnel, and time expense of maintaining the A-10 fleet as a whole very disproportionate to the unique capabilities it brings to the table.